Practical and intelligent tax saving solutions for you and your business

Tax Solutions

Whether personal or business tax affects our everyday life and it never stands still.

In the current climate clients expect their advisers to help them make more savings each year through careful tax planning.

Shipleys have a team of knowledgeable tax and accountancy experts who constantly look at ways to add value and provide practical effective solutions whether it’s an owner-managed business or a multi-national group. Our clients know that we genuinely value their custom and ensure that they are always more than satisfied with our work and costs.

Structuring your Business

Did you realise that the way your business is structured could be affecting how much tax you’re paying?

Do you get the feeling that you could be paying too much tax?

Operating through the appropriate legal entity is vital but can often be neglected if a business has grown organically.

We can provide advice on the most suitable business structure – sole trader, partnership, company, limited liability partnership.

We can help you to structure your business in the most tax efficient way, saving you tax and improving the efficiency of the business.
We also have the expertise to advise on all areas of corporate structuring issues such as:

The taxation issues can be complex, but with our expertise we can guide you through, helping you meet your commercial objectives in a tax efficient way.

One of the most common questions we hear is “how do I get my profits out of the company paying as little tax as possible?”

We work with our clients to consider the tax picture as a whole – getting an understanding of both personal and corporate, short term and long term goals.

Because we take into account the whole picture, we can ensure that when it comes to tax, you won’t miss a trick and that all avenues of tax relief are explored.

We know that working with us, through careful planning, you can extract tax from the business without facing a hefty tax bill.

We can also help you to calculate the taxation impact of extraction policies by dividend or salary/bonus; provide advice in relation to pension contributions and also have particular expertise in tax planning using different classes of share capital.

If you like the sound of working with people who have your goals and aspirations at the heart contact us now.

Property Tax

Shipleys are experts when it comes to property tax matters, advising you on how to arrange your property transaction in the most tax efficient manner. With effective strategies, we can significantly reduce the exposure on property transactions.

Speak to us about:

Services for developers

Services for investors

Professionals working in the property sector

Services for property agents

Capital Allowances

When you buy, lease or improve a commercial property, HMRC allows you to offset some of that expenditure for tax purposes. Your advisors have probably claimed for the more obvious features, but as capital allowance specialists we dig much deeper to make significant additional claims on your behalf.

Typically, we identify Capital Allowances of between 10% and 30% of the commercial property purchase price.

We use specialist surveyors with tax expertise, to visit your property to uncover this extra layer of allowable items. This service is relevant for two types of clients:

1. Commercial property owners and investors who can retrospectively claim for unused allowances, (going back many years in some cases), for alterations, extensions and upgrades to their buildings.

2. Buyers and sellers of commercial property who need to agree a value for plant and machinery as part of the purchase process.

Inheritance Tax Planning

IHT has been commonly described as a ‘voluntary tax’ and with good reason. It can usually be reduced with proper and often simple planning, ranging from lifetime planning, will planning or even after death variation or disclaimer can mitigate tax.

IHT planning will assist in preserving family wealth and will reduce tax bills for your heirs, With careful lifetime planning, you can even reduce your exposure to IHT whilst retaining the asset and income.

Asset Protection and Preservation

Asset Protection Essential for protecting and preserving company and family assets from third party claims, divorce, bankruptcy, spendthrift spouses, and youthful improvidence. Asset Protection has a number of forms, including:

Company Asset Protection – The valuable assets in a company, namely property, cash and brand, may in certain circumstances be protected by a restructuring exercise, using group structures, all without triggering taxes on the restructure whilst affording protection.

Family Asset/Wealth Protection – Family assets/wealth can be protected and preserved from claims, bankruptcy and divorce. Typically assets are placed into a properly constituted trust within certain limits with the result that the preservation and protection of the family assets is achieved without adverse tax consequences.

Non UK Resident Domicile & Property Holding Structures

This topic always seems to raise the most debate about the fairness of the UK tax system. And has been squeezed over the years, however if you are in the tax privileged position to be either non UK Dom or non UK Resident the tax benefits are still extra ordinarily valuable in the right circumstances, to say the least. However, this valuable status is generally under used (except by the super rich).

Tax & VAT Investigations

Tax investigations by HMRC often come as an unpleasant shock to individuals or businesses and can be very stressful. Those under enquiry often feel targeted and victimised.

At Shipleys we are non-judgmental, vigorous in defending our clients and aim to resolve the investigation in the most efficient manner possible without compromising the quality of our work.

We have the experience and know how to handle local district cases to large tax fraud cases both in direct and indirect (VAT) tax.

VAT Planning

Our VAT experts trained with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and have a complete understanding not only of the legislation but of HMRC’s policies and procedures.

Our work extends to every aspect of VAT but some of the services we are most often asked to provide involve negotiation with HMRC on liability issues and agreeing partial exemption methods, providing VAT planning ideas for clients to improve cash flow, assisting clients through the maze of VAT property law, and advising them on EU and other international transactions.

What with cyber-snooping being all the rage these days it seems the taxman is getting in on the act too.

HM Revenue & Customs has now fully unleashed its super-computer, costing over £100m and many years to make, to identify those who may have paid too little tax.

The powerful system, benignly dubbed “Connect”, now automatically gathers information from a myriad of government and corporate sources to create a detailed profile of each taxpayer’s financial position. Where this differs from the information provided by the taxpayer, the account is flagged up and subject to further possible investigation.

The system’s data-hoarding does not just stop at the income people have received from work and investment. It also amasses data from the digital footprint left by taxpayers online.

It collates data from diverse sources such as Airbnb and eBay, as well as obtaining anonymised information on all Visa and Mastercard transactions, enabling it to identify areas of likely underpayments which it can then target further.

HMRC also has powers to request one-off bulk data from third parties where there may be particular cause for concern. Insurance companies, hospitals and dentists supplied information to assist with the Tax Health Plan, for instance.

For those with investment properties, it can also access Land Registry records to see houses purchased/sold to check against information on a tax return. In addition, further sources enable it to determine if properties are being rented out and whether that income has been declared. Crucially, it can also determine if someone is likely to be able to afford such properties, or whether they are suspected of having used previously undeclared income or savings.

Particularly striking is the gathering of information from social media. HMRC are now monitoring online posts about holidays, parties and purchases. They may wish to ask questions where they do not feel lifestyle fits with an individual’s reported income.

The tax profession has raised concerns that HMRCs growing reliance on automated systems could mean an increasing number of innocent taxpayers facing investigation. Whilst many of the leads generated by Connect’s data collection maybe worth following up, a proportion will be unfounded causing unnecessary stress and anxiety to those targeted. A surface analysis of data or online information could quite easily lead to misinterpretation. An exaggeration over twitter or Facebook, for example, could paint a highly inaccurate picture resulting in false leads.

Shipleys Tax has many years of protecting taxpayers and succeeding in tax investigations with HMRC, if you need help please contact us 0114 275 6292 or email info@shipleystax.com.

What HMRC can find out about you

UK & overseas bank accounts, pensions: From 2017 HMRC will receive information from banks in more than 60 countries.

Web browsing and email records: Under the ‘Snoopers Charter’ HMRC will be able to access individual’s digital information

Earnings: From any employer, including those you have worked for casually, or on an ad-hoc basis. This includes any company benefits received. It can also access child benefit and maintenance payments through the child support agency

If your child is under 12 and you’re not working or don’t earn enough to pay National Insurance contributions, Child Benefit can help you qualify for National Insurance credits.These credits count towards your State Pension. They protect it by making sure you don’t have gaps in your National Insurance record.

Retirement may be the last thing on your mind when you’re looking after a new baby, but what you do now could have a big impact on your future finances.

Despite what you might think, no one automatically gets the full amount of State Pension when they retire. You’ll only get the full amount if you’ve paid, or been credited with, National Insurance contributions for 35 years.

The key word here is ‘credited’. Even if you’re not working while looking after your baby, you’ll get National Insurance credits when you claim Child Benefit until your youngest child is 12. The credits are automatically added to your National Insurance account when you claim Child Benefit, so you don’t need to do anything.

The Finance Bill 2016 finally received Royal Assent on 15 September, enacting proposals announced in the 2016 Budget, Autumn Statement 2015 and Summer Budget 2015. Amongst other things, Finance Act 2016 includes provisions relating to income tax rates and allowances; restrictions on tax reliefs for travel and subsistence expenses (in effect since April 2016), the reduction of the lifetime allowance on pension contributions from £1.25m to £1m (again, effective from 6 April 2016); and the reduction in the main rate of corporation tax to 17% for financial year 2020.

The Act is based on George Osbourne’s final Budget. The annual Finance Bill usually receives Royal Assent in early to mid-July. This year’s extensive delay has been largely blamed on the Brexit referendum followed by the summer parliamentary recess.

The Finance Act 2016 can be found online here or alternatively you contact us for more information.